Sven identified targets ages ago. Sanllehi has half a hrain. Edu is coming. The sky isn't falling.

Couple of things worth pointing out Ricky. Firstly, if you believe Vinai we had our plans drawn up back in October, when Sven was still here. Unless he keps potential targets to himself, I'm sure we'll still have those same list of targets. Secondly, we've had an interim, soon to be permanent head of recruitment in his place since Feb too in the form of Cagigao.

When you look back at Raul's Barca reign, one can't help but be worried.

But once the targets have been identified and our analytics/recruitment departments have narrowed each position down to 5 or so players, the real genius is picking the right guy to buy and how much of our budget to utilise. Where to compromise and where not. They're big decisions that can only really be judged as right or wrong when you see how they fit in with the overall strategy.

Clrnc wrote:

When you look back at Raul's Barca reign, one can't help but be worried.

Barcelona still make the same shitty deals after Sanllehis departure. It's deeper than a person there, the likes or Rosell and Bartomeu make some retarded point of paying through the nose.

Spanish dan has it all to prove

Ricky1985 wrote:

Sanllehi's area of expertise is not knowing potentially great players though. He might have that sort of knowledge but there's no reason to think he does. He has our analytics department to guide him, but even then it's about picking the right player out of the many selected.

From what I have seen, Sanllehi seems the schmoozing kind that has a contact book to rival anyone. Like David Dein from days gone by. But Dein had Wenger's genius in knowing the right players to move for. Who is at the club now to make those sorts of calls?

I think that's how his involvement will be focused = on getting the deals over the line rather than identifying the player positions or types.  He will likely use his contacts to help source players etc, but I don't think he will take the lead in terms of our recruiting / scouting.

I was listening to a podcast the other day, I think it was called "The Arsenal Vision," I chanced upon it. They had a guy on there from Stats Bomb, the data analytics company famous for popularising those radar/spider web looking stats analysers that you see everywhere. Anyway, he is in a position to know what he's talking about and he says our very own Stat DNA is as good as there is in analytics and that they employ some of the industry's brightest and best people. Comparable to the analytics team they have at Liverpool.

Perhaps that's what's really going to drive recruitment this summer and in windows to come?

More Xhakas and Perezes!

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert wrote:

More Xhakas and Perezes!

Depends on the context - I doubt Pirlo would have lasted 5 minutes in our dysfunctional set up.